Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America

The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.

Current global trends are bleak: weak economic growth, too much debt, declining incomes for the lower 99 percent, a dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, and ecological destruction - just to name a few. Many of us understandably feel resigned to an eroding standard of living in the years to come. At best. But what if we told you that there are specific attainable steps you can take today that can limit your vulnerability to these trends and help you be richer, healthier, and happier?

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis

Since 2014, international monetary agencies have been issuing warnings to a small group of finance ministers, banks, and private equity funds: The US government's cowardly choices not to prosecute J.P. Morgan and its ilk and to bloat the economy with a $4 trillion injection of easy credit are driving us headlong toward a cliff. As Rickards shows in this frightening, meticulously researched book, governments around the world have no compunction about conspiring against their citizens.

Amazon Customer says:"worth reading for those interested in economics"

The Art and Practice of Geomancy: Divination, Magic, and Earth Wisdom of the Renaissance

The Art and Practice of Geomancy teaches readers how to divine the answers to life's everyday questions about health, luck, new jobs, and love, as well as finding buried treasure, predicting the weather, and identifying secret enemies. Greer delivers to readers an ancient system of divination in an easy-to-use form requiring little more than a pen and a piece of paper.

Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation

James Howard Kunstler's critically acclaimed and best-selling The Long Emergency, originally published in 2005, quickly became a grassroots hit, going into nine printings in hardcover. Kunstler's shocking vision of our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike, and stimulated widespread discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

The Science of Energy: Resources and Power Explained

To better put into perspective the various issues surrounding energy in the 21st century, you need to understand the essential science behind how energy works. And you need a reliable source whose focus is on giving you the facts you need to form your own educated opinions.

World Made by Hand: The World Made by Hand Novels, Book 1

The electricity has flickered out. The automobile age is over. In Union Grove, a little town in upstate New York, the future is nothing like people thought it would be. Life is hard and close to the bone. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure.

Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body

In Cure, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels the world to meet the physicians, patients and researchers on the cutting edge of this new world of medicine. We learn how meditation protects against depression and dementia, how social connections increase life expectancy and how patients who feel cared for recover from surgery faster. We meet Iraq war veterans who are using a virtual arctic world to treat their burns and children whose ADHD is kept under control with half the normal dose of medication.

TimothyT says:"A brilliantly outlined Classic in the field of Mind Body Medicine"

The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health

A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves - and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine. Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health - for people and for plants - depends on Earth's smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut.

The Ascension Mysteries: Revealing the Cosmic Battle Between Good and Evil

David Wilcock's previous New York Times best sellers, The Source Field Investigations and The Synchronicity Key, used cutting-edge alternative science to reveal oft-hidden truths about our universe. In The Ascension Mysteries, David takes us on a gripping personal journey that describes the secret cosmic battle between positive and negative happening every day, hidden in both the traumas of our own lives and the world's headlines.

Wages of Rebellion

Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges - who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class - investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance.

Apocalypse Not: Why Everything You Know About 2012, Nostradamus and the Rapture Is Wrong

The hundreds of end-of-time prophecies splashed across the consciousness from the time of clay tablets to our Internet have had something besides hysteria in common: every one of them has been wrong. Here is a survey of three millennia of apocalyptic prophecies, tracing one of the most remarkable threads of our cultural history: our long and unproductive fascination with apocalyptic myths and miracles that can solve our problems without requiring committed action in our own lives.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? Have sex? Smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour?

The Harrows of Spring: The World Made by Hand Novels, Book 4

In the little upstate New York town of Union Grove, springtime is a most difficult season, known as "the six weeks want," when fresh food is scarce and winter stores have dwindled. Young Daniel Earle returns from his haunting travels around what is left of the United States intent on resurrecting the town newspaper. He is also recruited by the town trustees to help revive the Hudson River trade route shut down peevishly by the local grandee, planter Stephen Bullock.

Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

Imagine a blackout lasting not days but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to generators, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before.

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines

Peak Everything addresses many of the cultural, psychological and practical changes we will have to make as nature rapidly dictates our new limits. This latest book from Richard Heinberg, author of three of the most important books on Peak Oil, touches on the most important aspects of the human condition at this unique moment in time.

A combination of wry commentary and sober forecasting on subjects as diverse as farming and industrial design, this book tells how we might make the transition from The Age of Excess to the Era of Modesty with grace and satisfaction....

Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

In his most ambitious work to date, Morris Berman looks at the "why" of American decline. This book probes America's commitment to economic liberalism and free enterprise, stretching back to the late 16th century, and shows how this ideology, along with that of technological progress, rendered any alternative marginal to American history. Berman maintains, more than anything else, that this one-sided vision of the country's purpose finally did our nation in.

War and Peace

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is clearly seen in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle, all of them fully realized and equally memorable.

Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.

Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption, Book 1

When a massive solar flare fries the electrical grid, Captain Jordan Hughes' problems are just starting. Stranded far from home with a now-priceless cargo of fuel and a restless crew, Hughes weighs his options as violence worsens ashore and the world crumbles around the secure little world of his ship, the Pecos Trader.

Dream Gates

Albert Einstein once revealed that the inspiration for his theory of relativity came to him in a dream. With this program, you can learn how to navigate your own dreams and bring back their gifts of healing, self-understanding, and creative inspiration.

Publisher's Summary

The industrial age made possible by fossil fuels will surely decline as these fuels run out. In The Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer alerts the listener to possible changes future generations may face as these dwindling fuel supplies lead first to a deindustrial age, then to a society which salvages the remnants of our current plenty, and eventually to a time in which people may learn to live in balance with the environment: an ecotechnic society.

What the Critics Say

"Greer's work is nothing short of brilliant. He has the multidisciplinary smarts to deeply understand our human dilemma as we stand on the verge of the inevitable collapse of industrialism. And he wields uncommon writing skills, making his diagnosis and prescription entertaining, illuminating, and practically informative. Not to be missed." (Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute)

While some might have issues with the author's religion, the book itself offers an interesting preview of a world that may come, perhaps sooner than we think. Ecotechnic Future synthesizes current issues and debates and posits a possible future of declining energy availability and the consequences for our civilization. While The Ecotechnic Future may be depressing to some, I found the work insightful and thought provoking. It is useful to remember that we are living in a fossil fuel age that is but a blip in the long story of humanity. What the book examines is what may come after our energy rich blip has passed. I'd recommend this book for people interested in environmental issues or people interested in looking at a possible human future via the long duree.

This is a wide reaching historic and evolutionary account and view of human endevours with a view to show that we are heading for the cliff, nature does not care, but that we should change course completely for our own sake. Should be read by anyone who has some sanity left

What other book might you compare The Ecotechnic Future to and why?

Eaarth, The Great Turning,

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Some of it is really scary and hard hitting stuff, which is hard to stomach

Would you try another book from John Michael Greer and/or Tony Craine?

I'm definitely getting more JMG books.

What other book might you compare The Ecotechnic Future to and why?

Dmitri Orlov

How could the performance have been better?

Won't work on my Sansa Clip Zip unless I convert it to MP3 first.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Movie? We're living it!

Any additional comments?

Great wake up call from a lot of modes of thinking that turn out to be very old after all. I thought I got some exposure from being an English major in college, but apparently a lot of the good stuff wasn't on the reading list. Would have loved to have this guy as a prof. because he shows the pitfalls of different ways of thinking.

I listened to JMG'S book "Rise and Fall" prior to this one. I would suggest readers do the same. The greater the number of decades you have lived, the better able you are to see the future he outlines. Regardless of your political beliefs or scientific knowledge, you will learn from this text and have much to ponder. Our society is destined to change significantly as petroleum supplies decline and arguably we are just beginning to see these changes. Mr Greer's book describes a future much different than what most people envision. This is an excellent book to encourage your offspring to read if you're a parent.

Don&#8217;t waste your time on this one! The author Mr. Greer, is also Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. In short he envisions the failure of society after the decline of fossil fuel resources and a return to subsistence living, composting and organic gardening, which he currently practices. There is no credit given to human ingenuity and the small amount of energy used when compared to total sunlight striking the earth. Unless you want to be depressed and believe in half truths and inappropriate in interpretations, don&#8217;t bother.